Address at the Groundbreaking Ceremony for the Construction of a New Container Dock of the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port

Kandal Province, March 9, 2011

Your Venerable Monks,
Your Excellency Pan Guanxue, China’s Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia,
Excellencies, Senators, Members of the Parliament, and Members of the Royal Government,Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, National and International Guests,
Dear all Compatriots!

It is my great pleasure with privilege to be here with your Venerable Monks, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen in theopening of the construction of a new container dock of the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port, which is located in Kandal Leu Village, Banteay Dek Commune, Kien Svay District, Kandal Province and financed by a loan from the Government of the People’s Republic of China. Following my inauguration of Prek Tamak Bridge on January 24, 2011 and the opening of the construction of the National Road No. 59 from Koun Damrei - Malai - Sampovloun - Phnom Prek - Kamrieng - Pailin on February 15, 2011 organized by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, now I attend the opening of the construction site of a new container dock of the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port. Once again, I would like to kindly request H.E. Pan Guanxue to forward the deepest gratitude from the Royal Government and People of Cambodia to the Government and People of the People's Republic of China, who is a very good friend and source of finance for the reconstruction of Cambodia, especially transport infrastructure such as roads, bridges and ports. China has always been attentive to provide assistance to rebuild our prioritized sectors including economy, industry, agriculture, education, health and capacity development that are main catalysts for promoting growth and social development, creating employment and improving people's livelihood. The assistance includes the construction of irrigation systems, hydro-power plants and roads - bridges, human resource development and promotion of Chinese investment in Cambodia and so forth.

According to the report of H.E.Tram Iv Tek, the Minister of Public Works and Transport, the proposed construction area will cover an area of 6,600 meter square with 10 hectares of container dock, which include an administrative office and water and electricity network. The site is located along the Mekong River and the National Road No. 1 of Kandal Province, 30 Km east of Phnom Penh. The new container dock allows the docking of two 5000 T Ships simultaneously, with capacity of 120,000 TEUs per annum. The construction will be implemented by Shanghai Construction Group and inspected by Quangzu Vang Ang Inspection Company. The project will cost USD 28,220,000 million and take 30 months to be completed. I strongly believe the new container dock will increase the loading/unloading capacity of the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port. The new dock will become a main hub for distributing goods across the country that can push the internal integration, international trade and regional trade a step further, especially to realize our rice export target of 1 million metric tons per annum.

Transport is crucial for economic development, trade, global integration, especially access to global market. Among all transport means, waterway transport is the cheapest. In this sense, I think water ports link dry ports, airports and train stations to the region and the world. Water ports have played an important role in the development of the global economy by partly promoting regional integration through the expansion of market access and establishment of free trade areas

The Royal Government, so far, has always regarded the construction of infrastructure including the economic infrastructuresuch as roads, bridges, irrigation, port ...etc and social infrastructure such as education and health ...etc, as the righteous option with high priority and the catalyst to upgrade the economic dynamism with high growth. Normally, the Royal Government has spent substantial amount of money for the investment on economic infrastructures. Along with that, the Royal Government has played a critical role to be a strategist, designing the policies to encourage and follow up the social infrastructure development that private sector can do it. The Royal Government realizes that this economic infrastructure development has provided three main benefits which are (1) to enable the people to be able to utilize infrastructure, which is the public goods of the state (2) the huge spending on the building of infrastructure makes the gross requirement increase and accelerate the pace of development and (3)the infrastructure provides inputs and possibility to the private sector in promoting production.

Based on this perspective, the Royal Government has paid high attention to the construction of port infrastructures either sea port or river port for the interest as mentioned above as well as to promote export, especially when Cambodia is improving its competitive advantage in the regional and global markets.

It should be noted that since 1952, the activities of the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port have not been so much busy. Therefore, although there is on-going development today, this port has not responded to the need of water transportation as well as meeting the increase of container capacity. However, today the Phnom Penh Municipality is becoming larger because of the fact that huge buildings and constructions have been constructed according to the requirement of construction materials and the increasing quantity of the containers and cars and transportation activities have made the traffic more congested, especially in the capital city on the road of transporting, collecting and distributing of Phnom Penh Port. These factors will not allow the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port to enlarge its operation on the existing location at the Chruoy Changva, which is in the heart of the capital city and is also surrounded by buildings. Therefore, we have to select the new location for the construction of this new port in Kien Svay in order to contribute to improving capability of the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port for receiving the increasing containers and diverting the traffic congestion in the Capital City of Phnom Penh. Moreover, the connection of this new port with the water transportation along the Mekong to the sea can actually reduce the cost of petrol, cheap cost and more economically cost effective and efficient. Thus, the water transportation is the best and most effective mean to ensure the low cost and transportation of goods, which are of high quantity to reach the far-reaching destinations, and contribute to the reduction of Carbon Dioxide and Green House Gas, which is the source of global warming. At the same time, this kind of transportation will also help the Royal Government in reducing cost on road maintenance which have been broken because of the overweight transportation activities as well as contributing to reducing the land traffic accidents.

I realize that this newly built port facility at the new location means that all sectors are developed due to jobs and new business activities will be created for people, who live around the port and those who are required to provide services for vessels and port. Moreover, new port facility development will help increase Cambodia’s domestic and external trade activities as port is a place for transferring and storing and distributing items to all places within the country, exchanging trade in the region and the globe as well as collecting large part of budget revenue for the nation and contributing to ultimate poverty reduction.

Our Phnom Penh Autonomous Port is a river port which is linked to the lower Mekong of southern Vietnam. Under China’s financing loan scheme for the river port construction, Cambodia will have better port system along the Mekong River to provide waterway transportation service from the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port to the Kai Mep Port, which is deeper sea and international port, directly linking to international markets.

I strongly believe that port facility development and container dock along the Mekong River will accelerate economic growth, create economic opportunity and new transportation channel to southern Chinese sea.

In the next 30 months, we will have new container dock under the authority of the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port to meet highly demanded services of our nation. On behalf of the Royal Government, I would like to express my appreciation to the management and officials of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, in particular officials and workers of the Phnom Penh Autonomous Port, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, related Ministries/Institution and the Authority of Kandal Province, who have work very hard to realize the construction of this new port. The Royal Government remain persistently stick to its will to encourage and give high priority to the rehabilitation and reconstruction of economic infrastructures such as roads, bridges, railway, waterway and airway transport and port facility to better improve internal socio-economic integration as well as regional and global integration, aiming to create closer cooperation and good environment for trade, investment, private sector development, more employment generation to contribute to promoting economic growth, reducing poverty, enhancing social welfare for our citizens.

At the same time, I would like to congratulate the two Chinese companies – Construction Shanghai Group, which implements the construction project and Guangzhou Wan An Company, which controls construction techniques, for implementing other road and bridges construction projects in Cambodia. Taking this opportunity, I would like to express my high appreciation and encouragement to the two companies for their continued efforts to implement their respective projects in the construction of the New Phnom Penh Autonomous Port as projected with high quality assurance.

Along with that, I would like to remind our people, who live and travel along the road, to seriously take care of your traveling while travelling along good roads and bridges, in particular along the National Road No.1 which is almost finished its construction project being conformed to regional standard. I would also like to recall our compatriots to not drive over speed of 90 km/hour and of at least 40 km/hour in the town and avoid outdistancing in order to prevent from any unexpected traffic accidents, which may cause loss of human lives or serious injuries. Along with that, transport companies have to take highly moral responsibility as well as to strictly obey traffic law in order to stop overweight load to avoid damaging our newly constructed roads.

In conclusion, I would like to wish the Venerable Monks, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished National and International Guests, Civil Servants, Teachers, and Students, especially H.E. Chinese Ambassador and His Colleagues, Experts and Technicians, who have been commissioned to work in the Kingdom of Cambodia, the four gems of Buddhist blessing:Longevity, Nobility, Health and Strength.

May I now declare the Opening of the Construction of the New Container Dock of the Phnom Penh Autonomous Portlocated at Kandal Leu, Bontey Dek Commune, Kien Svay District of Kandal Province!

Address at the Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the International Women's Day March 8

(March 07, 2011)

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen!

Today, my wife and I are very pleased to be here to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the March - 8 InternationalWomen's Day. The people across the country are also celebrating this anniversary. I believe the event will strengthen and expand our partnership with national and international institutions on the areas of gender equity, elimination of discrimination and violence against women, enhancement of women's ownership and social welfare.

I would like to take this opportunity to praise the Ministry of Women's Affairs and related ministries/institutions, NGOs and associations for the hard work in enhancing women's value and role in socio-economic activities and eliminating violence and discrimination against women. I would also like to commend the National Council for Women, National Commission for Promoting Social Morality, Women's Value and Khmer Families, and the Cambodian Red Cross for the active involvement to address women's challenges, to support women's enhancement programs and to encourage them to participate in socio-economic activities.
I would also like to thank the development partners, civil society and private sector for providing financial and mental support in the campaign.

On behalf of the Royal Government, my wife and I myself, would like to pay tribute to all women for their bravery in fighting obstacles to attain good likelihood, rights, power, status to move out of vulnerability and achieve social harmony. 100 years of women's hard work have brought about the change in human behavior and recognition of women's potential, egalitarian status, and opportunity to serve in economic activities. The celebration of this event does not imply that we have just started to recognize women's value. According to this history and social facts, women have received particular attention and been highly valued. The claim is further strengthened by the historical fact that Cambodia has been a maternal society and some educational proverbs such as “insulting own mothers equals insulting god”, “rice enhance land, women enhance men” and so forth. Along with this, we all acknowledge that Khmer women are dignified and gentle. They can be good mothers or good older sisters. They are working as employees and employers. Their jobs range from political positions, judicial positions to private sector. Cambodia indeed fully acknowledges women's capability, knowledge, skills, advantage and potentials that can be used as important input in socio-economic development, as we have always stated that “women are the backbone of the economy and society”.

In our past celebration of Women's Day, we always recalled the long history of women's fight for rights and power, equal opportunity for employment, likelihood, social status and role to prepare new strategies and activities to respond to these problems. In particular, this year's theme is “Youths helping women means helping themselves and the society”. The theme encourages youths to take part in maintaining the social order by saying no to violence and immoral activities against other people, especially women and female children, drugs and alcohols and fulfilling their respective duties in conserving the tradition, custom, and culture that are the identity of our nation, as stated in a proverb that goes “Youths are Bamboo Shoots”.
Youths are full of energy and mental strength, and they will become the core resources of the country; therefore, participation from youths is essential.

The selection of this theme correctly and timely responds to the needs of your society that requires all citizens, especially youths, to become good and dignified citizens in a civilized society, who treat others with respect. Overall, we clearly understand that if we are careless to solve all these issues urgently, these passive acts will mount into a big burden to families, communities and the whole society.

With regard to address these challenges, the Royal Government has immediately introduced the “Guideline on Implementation of Policy on Safe Commune/Village”, which states five objectives as follows: (1) No thief or robbery of any kinds (2) No production, distribution and use of narcotic drug, (3) No misconduct, women and children trafficking and domestic violence, (4) No gangsters (5) No gambling, no unlawful procession of weapon or no crimes of any kinds.

Taking this opportunity, I would like to request the leadership, officials, and local authority of all levels to strictly keep carrying their works, providing good cooperation and having high responsibility in the future in order to cope with challenges that women and youth are facing today. Separately, the Royal Government has also adopted regulation and other appropriate strategies and a number of coordinating measures to protect women and ensure them justice including “the Law on Prevention of Domestic Violence and Victim Protection,” “the Law on Anti-Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation” and “Criminal Code”. Facing this challenge, all of us need to understand that discrimination against women, violence against women and children and woman and child trafficking are not only a problem of a woman, a family or a community, but also a tragedy of the whole national socio-economy and as a global issue.

Indeed, this day has made many countries make effort to ensure equity between men and women, to have same salary for same job, to ensure maternal leave, to ensure equal right between men and women, to have right to basic education, to prevent labor exploitation on women, and to consider violence as the crime to be charged under law. Along with this, Cambodia has also showed new much progress in promoting right, position and role of women in line with Millennium Development Goals as H.EING KUNTHAPHAVI, Minister of Women’s Affairs, has stated in this report a moment ago. In fact, Cambodia has successfully created a comprehensive systematic strategy for gender mainstreaming. Among those, key point to achieve Gender Equity areNeary Ratanak 5-Year Strategic Plan of Ministry of Women’s Affairs, which comprise of priority sectors and key gender mainstreaming programs such as providing economical encouragement to the women, women‘s involvement in decision making and politic; woman and education, changes in behaviors and attitudes, legal protection for woman, improving health and nutrition for woman as well as gender mainstreaming into policies, planning, legal and judicial and decentralization and de-concentration reform programs. In parallel, the government have prepared and expanded Millennium Development Goal to mirror a national specific context aiming to reduce violence and all other forms of violence to the women and children by the year 2015. Through this, Cambodia is the first country in the world which have embedded the reduction of violence on women as an indicator into national development plan and paid strongly attention to domestic violence, human trafficking and other forms of violence.

Moreover, the Royal Government is determined to at best effort to enable woman, especially support-less women living in rural area to receive health care, to send children to schools and to have proper living condition and just legal protection for women, and avoid from violence, trafficking, rape and all other forms of violence. Another important part is that the government always pays attention to increase participation ratio, at maximum possible, of women in all levels of national agencies from central to local ones.

At the same time, as my personal activities, I have always shares difficulties and support to family, particularly the women who delivered three babies, doing so I thought it was part of improving women and children welfare. Although those assistances are minimal it is sincerity in helping them to resolve their burdens. Truly, women who delivered only one baby sustains a lot of suffering, let alone the women who deliver three babies.

To what extend will she suffer? And these activities are exemplary to all other people to share burden of families and support-less women.

Taking this opportunity, I would like to admire and congratulate Lok Chumteav Dr. Bun Rany, as a Cambodian woman, who was named as “eminent figure of joint action plan of the UN Secretary General for women and children”, who fulfill very important role in humanitarian sector, to take part in poverty reduction and prevention of diseases in her capacity as President of Cambodian Red Cross. This high honor is birth of endeavor, utmost physical and moral energy, and intellect made in contribution promotion of woman, child and baby health, public awareness of issues related to woman, child and baby health, mobilizing funds from development partners, civil society and private sectors to support implementation of the action plan for the promotion of health of women, children, and babies in Cambodia. Along with this, I have observed that in the capacity as the honorary chairperson of the National Commission for Promoting Social Morality, Women’s Value and Khmer Families, Lok Chumteav Bun Rany has always supported and promoted the enhancement of situation, ranks and roles of Cambodian women and social welfare in order to contribute to the reduction and elimination of discrimination and all forms of domestic violence on women and children.

It is clear that extensively and bravely fulfilling its humanitarian mission ultimately helps reduce hardship of our people and victims on time and contribute to transform Cambodia’s society without all form of discrimination against women and children. In this regard, I would like to wish your Excellency a success in highly appreciated mission for the benefit of our people and Kingdom of Cambodia as well as a whole world human being.

In fact, over the last decades, Cambodia has achieved a great deal of achievement for enhancing value and role of women, preventing from and eliminating discrimination and violation against women. However, there are many things remain to be done in this sector which is required us to continue to further promote and overcome. In this connection, I would like to put up a number of recommendations for leaders and officials of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, related ministries and institutions to continue to implement the enhancement of value and role of women, the prevention and elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against women as the followings:

First, must continue to mobilize financial resources from development partners and charitable persons to support for creating fund to implement women welfare enhancement program and to contribute to solve difficulty women are facing. In this regards, the ministry must continue to closely cooperate with related ministries/institutions such as the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, Ministry of Information, Ministry of Culture and Arts and the Ministry of Cult and religious affairs to promote Buddhist religious preaching program to perform psychotherapy for youths group and adults and to inform difficulty of domestic violence.

Second, must continue to provide education of good culture and civilization of our nation to explore the value and role of women and Khmer family which is a mechanism to combat inflow of negative foreign culture, eliminate bad activities among youths and children group, badly influencing our national culture, custom and norm.

Third, must examine a possibility of creating rescue and solution of domestic violence center and establish voluntary group at community to ensure safety of women, children, and vulnerable group. Moreover, the Ministry has to find the way to improve performance of assigned officials to be more active in solving and downgrading problem while domestic violence or immoral activities are made based on the principle of cooperation, independent and high responsibility of those officials. Along with this, we have to search for means to accelerate the actvities of the officials in charge of this work to be more active with timely intervention and coordination, while there are any domestic violence or immoral acts, based on good cooperation, ownership, and highest responsibility of the officials in charge.

Fourth, increase the dissemination to all areas in the country about the urgent contact mobile number in each area and the dissemination about the scope of criminal offence for the those who commit domestic violence and other prosptitution. Once again, I would like all relevant ministries/institutions and all levels of local authorities to contunue strengthening and expanding working efficiency in the implementation of law and other legal documents related to the elemination of all forms of discrimination against women, domestic violence, trafficking of women and children and rapping ...etc.

During this solem celebration of a Decade of the International Women’s Day on 3 March today, on behalf of the Royal Government I would like to announce our commitment in fully promoting and supporting the mission to upgrade the value and roles of women under the theme: “Youth help women means help themselves and society”. In this regard, we all in state institutions, private sector, civil society, and national and international organizations, have to sponsor and support as well as providing closer cooperation in promoting the situation of Cambodian women and youth for the reputation and acceleration of our socio-economic development.

Taking this opportunity, I would like to wish the King Father, the Queen Mother, and His Majesty the King Samdech Preahbat Baromneat Norodom Seihamoni, the King of the Kingdom of Cambodia, who have always paid high attention to children and grandchildren, especially women and children, the strength of health and long live in order to be the shade for Cambodian people all over the Kingdom of Cambodia.

Finally, together with the dedecation to the 08-March International Women’s Day under the theme: “Youths helping women means helping themselves and the society”, my wife and I would like to wish Excellencies, Ladied and Gentlemen, Distinguished National and International Guests and all Compatriots the four gems of Buddhist blessing: Longevity, Nobility, Health and Strength.

Address at the 13th Anniversary of the National Culture Day

Chaktomuk Conference Hall, March 3rd, 2011

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
Veteran actors, actresses and instructors,
Dear all the actors and actresses,

Today, my wife and I are pleased to be here in the 13th Anniversary of the National Culture Day and the closing of the 2011 Khmer Cultural Show which is an event organized to promote and conserve our national culture. This event not only represents the policy program and cultural development plan of the Royal Government, but it is also intended to conserve, protect and develop the national culture and eliminate any campaign against the Cambodian culture.

Along with this, the Royal Government strongly supports the production of cultural crafts by encouraging innovation, promoting the richness of Khmer cultural products, raising awareness of the wonderful Khmer culture and morality, preventing the inflow of negative culture and eliminating negative activities among the youths and children that could dirty the wonderful tradition and culture of our society. In this spirit, the Royal Government firmly uphold the national solidarity policy to mobilize people from all corners and political factions to come under the national motto “Nation-Religion-King” to form a combined force to conserve and develop our culture, tradition, custom and social achievements to promote the image and dignity of the country with egalitarian status in the international arena. In general, the solidarity of our people not only contributes to an important input for protecting the sovereignty, integrity, peace and progress in Cambodian society, but it also help us conserve the wonderful culture of our nation.

Taking this opportunity, on behalf of the Royal Government and myself personally, I would like to commend the effort of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts for the organization of this event. I strongly believe that the event will become a dynamic dissemination movement of “the culture” that will trigger further research and understanding. Despite it only runs for one day, this event will greatly benefit the socio-economic development effort and motivate all Cambodian citizens to take part in cultural conservation and development.

As all of us have been aware of, each society has been striving to conserve and develop their culture and civilization. Cambodia has a very long history and clear origin, can build its own culture, civilization and identity including language, music, musical equipments, dances, titles, temples, foods and other daily use equipments without having to steal from other nations. This richness in Khmer culture is reflected through stone scripts and unearthing of prehistoric sites. The claim is also supported by millions of sculpture found on all Khmer temples. This shows Khmer's cultural richness which has become an eternal spirit, heritage and identity of the Khmer kingdom and ancestors. We are proud since some of our cultural heritage have been globally acknowledged and inscribed in the world heritage list. In this sense, I would like to appeal to the people to ensure the safety of the Khmer culture by conserving and transferring cultural knowledge and experience to the next generation in order to conserve and develop the culture according to the Royal Government’s policy.

The theme of this year's cultural day is “Cambodia, Kingdom of Culture: all for safety, sustainability, harmony and progress”. Indeed, our country is full of cultural heritage and so it can also be known as the “Kingdom of Culture”. What we have raised so far are contextually and honestly true. The key factor is we are the descendents who have inherited this great cultural heritage; we together need to continue promoting the utmost potential, knowledge capacity, and know-how through research, documentation, restoration, information-dissemination, modernization and creation of new works complying with conservation methods in order to germinate the spirit of national culture and motherland loving that is the core of ensuring the security of culture, maintaining sustainability, and the progress of our society in the future.

Taking the opportunity of this culture day, I would like to request compatriots and all relevant ministries and institutions to unify and closely collaborate to achieve the goals that have been shown including continue imposing preventive measures through all means to make the entire society receive the continuity, security of culture, harmonization of national culture, and national reputation on international stage. In this regard, with respect to promoting of all kinds of cultures in our country, we do not promote only multiculturalism in our nation but also promote the sustainability of national culture as well. Hence, cultural institutions at all levels need to continue the hard-work and efforts more vigorously in order to make the spirit of our “3rd March National Culture Day” become a day to increase the potential of national culture aimed to make this sector contribute to the national socio-economic development. Before us now, our priority policy is culture conservation and development. For that we have many other missions including recommendations and guidance on culture to ensure the dignity, reputation, sustainability and progress of the country.

For this cause, we need to work harder together in order to make our culture sector become a genuine foundation of national socio-economic development, and we also need to continue germinating the youth spirit on national culture through promoting the participation of the people especially youth groups in maintaining, protecting and developing the culture. Hence, the training and knowledge-dissemination on the importance of culture conservation and development work along with encouraging the movement of popular arts are necessary for Cambodia at the present as well as in the future.

My wife and I would like to express our admiration and gratitude for popular art groups from all places in the country who have worked hard in training and producing many performances under the management of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts in order to participate in the popular arts opera nationwide, and congratulate the great “3rd March National Culture Day”. All these great activities certainly have many advantages for contributing further to the building of the kingdom of culture.

In parallel, my wife and I are indeed pleased to see the performances of the popular arts, participating in the arts show in this 2011, have increased compared to 2010. Indeed, last year we had only 27 but this year we have 52 performances; those performances are operas, Lkorn, Ayai, and dances as such, all these are our cultural assets with national pride. I have a belief that though all the performance in this year show have not shown perfect quality yet but through the opening of this show it has allowed all those performances to be improved and become productions for culture sector that can entertain the public and be used for businesses.

In fact, I acknowledge that all artists have worked tirelessly making each group and each performance have their own good quality worth to be merited. In addition, I would like to provide some recommendations to the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, relevant ministries and institutions, production owners, composters, movie directors, and all artists in the aim to contribute to improving, conserving, and developing our national culture as followed:

• The production of popular arts performances need to be linked to the national policy on culture sector; knowing the national policy on culture sector is necessary knowledge and a compass for composers, movie directors all artists. Extensive and in-depth research on national policy and national strategy on this culture sector will help composers, performance and show producers to be line with the social aspiration that reflects the true identity of Khmer culture. Hence, the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts need to continue providing education and information-dissemination on national policy on the culture sector, which need to be done extensively among production owners, composers, directors, popular arts performance producers and all artists of us.

• All productions need to be in compliance with national norms. Truly, our ancestors have created countless norms for composition, creation of art performances, and art shows that reflects our great culture. In general, our colors and identities of our nation are hidden in these methodologies. The creation of art performances lacking of norms is a destruction of the value and the spirit of our art culture. Hence, I would like to request production owners, composers, directors and all artists to continue studying thoroughly the norms of each art form so that we can maintain our identity and the spirit of art culture of our nation. We together need to remember that progress occurs from study, knowledge is valuable for conservation and development. If we have no extensive knowledge, development will face obstacles; and it is the same for the popular art groups. In parallel, the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts should host a meeting for composers, directors and artists in order to strengthen their consultations aimed to share knowledge and experiences through mutual understanding and forgiveness. In overall, I am of the view that this method will provide key to effective improvement for unlimited development and new creation.

• The quantity must be connected to the quality that is qualification to acknowledgement of art creativity. Repetition is vital enemy to the artists. In this sense, if we achieve many products without quality, those products will not be supported from people. In fact, creating a lot of art products is necessary, but ensue those product with high quality with objective to attain honorable entertainment for the people and dissemination knowledge for national cultural development is even more important and essential.

• It is alright to be poor in anything, except ideas. Hence, initiative is prerequisites to overcoming poverty and creation. Although we have culture of diversity, but it requires new initiatives to further create more art products. Initiative and creativity enable us to avoid copying someone’s achievement. Copying someone‘s achievement is crime against intellectual property right which dampen growth of national cultural art. Of course, artists always learn from other, but they should copy from others thoughtlessly or copy the whole. They should draw good lessons for consideration and extract it into knowledge to create new product, so that national cultural art can make progress.

• We need to use art to feed art. Obviously, un-depleted resources are supports from our people towards protection, conservation and development of national cultural heritage. Through this, our group of popular artists should try their best to train and perform in order to get supported by our people, and then it will enable our group to gain popularity and gain income for livelihood easily.

• Opening up the opera house is a school because it will provide artists with the opportunity to share exchange experience and learn from each other in terms of stage performing and other arts such molding statute, craftsmanship, food and so on. As future visions, cultural institutions at all level should develop their own plan for hosting opera shows at their respective provincial, regional, and central levels to sustain the continuity of the national cultural art sector across the country. The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts must try the utmost to constantly provide the pedagogical training to performers by consecutively organizing annual opera shows at the community, regional, and central levels. If we can make this happen, we can truly transform our people’s arts to be more developed, which may significantly contribute to the name as Cambodia: National Center of Culture Dissemination and the Kingdom of Culture.

• The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts must comprehensively consider the words of Cultural Safety, which is not only aimed at the abstract culture, but also pay attention to the safety of the physical relics, meaning that we have to take care of the management, maintenance, preservation, protection, and repairing of the temples beside the Angkor and Preah Vihear areas, which are facing the collapse. At least when the national economy is not favorable enough for repairing, the management or protection should be paid attention to in order to prevent those shattered temples from becoming more serious with the lack of maintenance and we have to work hard to transform all historical temples and resorts to be welcoming places to serve the national tourism sector.

• The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts must make laws on the management of the national cultural asset management in either physical or abstract condition, and promote the implementation of the intellectual property, especially the law of writer’s rights and other rights in order to eliminate the stealing or plagiarism of other writers’ masterworks and protect the new masterworks, which are the intellectual property of the actors and actresses and writers, or this new masterwork creators.

In the substance as mentioned above, I strongly believe that Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen will continue your cooperation by discussing, sharing, exchanging dialogues and contributing to the development of awareness, experiences, findings, and visions for the cause of jointly preserving and developing the national cultural relics. Along with this, we have to increase closer and loyal solidarity based on the principles of maintenance, protection, promotion of the national cultural heritage and development of cultural actions, prevention and elimination of every campaign posing cultural war against Cambodia. At the same time, the Royal Government will continue implementing various measures in order to encourage all levels of civil servants, especially the production owners, composers, managers, people’s arts and all to abide by the dignity, noble morality, and effective implementation of the professional conscience with creativity and high responsibility, which is suitable to be citizen of theKingdom of Culture and builder of the rich cultural properties in the world.

Once again, my wife and I would like to thank for the efforts made by the management and officials of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, who have organized such significant national cultural event. Through this, I firmly believe that Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen will fully support the national wide people’s arts and this National Culture Day.

Finally, together with the dedication to the 13th National Culture Day on 3rd March, which is the day to commemorate the gratitude of our Khmer ancestors who have left the legacy of national cultural relics and the Closing of the 2011 Khmer Cultural Show nation-wide, my wife and I would like to wish Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen and all Actors and Actresses the four gems of Buddhist blessing: Longevity, Nobility, Health and Strength.